Perfect Sympathy
by Liem
Summary: [Her feet can sense them, and she feels a bit closer to the good earth that shows her more than her useless eyes ever could.] Toph meets somebody who shares her affinity with the earth. [oneshot, Tophcentric]


**I. Taste**

Toph at first turns up at her nose at the sprig of garlic wrapped in bread. "That's disgusting," she informs the old man.

He shrugs. "Suit yourself." And he bites into it, munching contentedly.

After a while, she breaks down. "Is it good?"

"See for yourself," and he grabs another roll lying on the plate (she can't believe he eats a whole _plateful_ of them. Doesn't it stink?). But she takes it anyway.

Before she bites down on it she has a thought about what her parents' reaction would be if they could see her here, in this comfortable but humble cottage, with this old, earth-stained peasant, clutching a bit of garlic wrapped in bread. The thought prompts her to rip off a mouthful in as unladylike a manner as she can.

The bread is fresh and the taste of the garlic sharp and sudden and strong in her mouth.

"Food from the earth," the old peasant simply says.

She is too busy eating to answer, but she does understand what he is talking about. This bread is made of wheat that grew in the soil, this garlic sprang from it. It frustrates her that she cannot _see_ this.

But her feet can sense the roots the plants thrust into the soil, and the stalks standing erect and tall, and as she eats she feels a bit closer to the good earth that shows her more than her useless eyes ever could.

**II. Smell**

The first thing the old peasant teaches her is to fine-tune her other senses. Toph decides to practice her smelling on her aunt Jade, who is visiting. The woman wears a lingering perfume that is unique and strange. Toph always knows when she has been in a room. From the dizzying melee of exotic scents Toph forms a picture of her aunt as a striking woman with a strong, firm mouth, and full of vitality.

When her aunt sees the blind little girl, coddled and cushioned by her parents, split a rock with her bare hands she insists on getting her an Earthbending teacher, even though she has to fight with her brother and they part on bad terms. The man patronizes and doesn't teach, but Toph is glad for any chance to be near Earthbending. She is grateful to her aunt, and the sound of her arguing with Toph's father, strong and not afraid to stand up to him, stays with Toph long after she leaves.

(Jade Bei Fong is actually small and fine-boned, with porcelain skin and delicate features. She is frail of health and dies of a fever a month after her niece leaves with the Avatar.)

**III. Touch**

Toph Bei Fong is a lady. Her hands are small and fine and soft. Pampered with oils and lotions, they are not meant for rough work. Her feet, however, are a different story. Small though they are, they are always bare, dirty, rough, and coarse, constantly gouged by sharp rocks and pebbles. They are hardly genteel.

Through them she sees the world.

**IV. Hear**

The agitation of the old farmer is apparent even from far away. His heart is pounding against his chest; Toph, ever attuned to the earth and its vibrations, can feel it. But before she can ask what is wrong, what's going on, a voice speaks.

It is soft and soothing. It is saying, "Rest assured, my father, the land is not to be sold."

She can hear the arrogance in it. The deceit.

* * *

Behind the door, Toph listens. Her father has a visitor, one she recognizes. His voice leaks through the door. 

It is smooth and confident. It is saying, "All our land is for sale. It has been tended well and is rich and fertile. Now that my father is ailing, he cannot work on it nor oversee it, and so we offer it to you."

She can hear the arrogance in it. The deceit seems to echo, so loudly she wonders why her father doesn't hear.

**V. See**

The old farmer dies during the winter. In full spring, he is buried. The Bei Fong family attends his funeral, as befits their role as the new owners of (much) of his lands. Buried with him are the lessons he could have taught: the moves, the stances, the many nuances of Earthbending.

Toph, the daughter that the Bei Fong family does not have, is not there to see his coffin lowered into the ground.

* * *

But she takes what little he has imparted and she trains. She practices and she teaches herself, her own unique style of bending. 

It works for her.

When she enters Earth Rumble for the first time, her opponent mocks her. She is a girl. She is a girl and she is tiny and fragile and _blind_. She taunts him back, makes him angry, and when he charges she knocks him out of the ring.

"That move was so obvious," she says to him, leaning over the side of the arena. "It was so obvious a _blind_ person could have seen it."

She goes on to take the belt and the title of Champion.


End file.
